Tag: history

One Careful Owner

·

The interview never happened. It should have. John Clarke died in 2017, and the genre died with him: the po-faced minister, the patient interrogator, the absurdity delivered in the flat tones of a man explaining a routine procurement. So here is the sketch he might have written, had he lived to watch us buy three used submarines and call it a defence strategy.

The set is two chairs and a desk. We join them mid-interview.

DAWE: Minister, under the original deal Australia was to receive three submarines. Two second-hand, one brand new.

CLARKE: The new one was the exciting one.

DAWE: And now?

CLARKE: Three submarines, Bryan. The number remains unchanged.

DAWE: But the new one has gone.

CLARKE: The new one has been streamlined.

DAWE: Into what?

CLARKE: Into an older one.

DAWE: So all three are now second-hand.

CLARKE: All three are proven. We’ve placed a premium on simplicity. The brand-new one had never been to sea. We didn’t know it. These, we know everything about. We even know how old they are.

DAWE: How old are they?

CLARKE: Between six and fifteen years.

DAWE: The design life is thirty-three.

CLARKE: So someone’s taken care of the difficult early years. We’ve outsourced the running-in. The Americans have very kindly absorbed the depreciation.

DAWE: The country is paying an extraordinary amount of money.

CLARKE: You could buy a great many doughnuts, Bryan.

DAWE: We’re not buying doughnuts.

CLARKE: No, but it gives you a sense of scale. Warehouses of them. Fresh daily.

DAWE: For three used submarines.

CLARKE: One careful owner. Full service history.

DAWE: When do they arrive?

CLARKE: The first in 2032. And in the meantime, the jobs. That’s what nobody mentions.

DAWE: What jobs?

CLARKE: We have two hundred Australian tradespeople at Pearl Harbor. Skilled people. Working on the submarines.

DAWE: Our submarines.

CLARKE: The American ones.

DAWE: We’ve sent Australian workers to fix the US Navy’s submarines.

CLARKE: To increase their sea days. They’re behind, the poor beggars. Can’t build them fast enough. So we’re helping out.

DAWE: While we wait for ours.

CLARKE: While we wait. It’s the alliance, Bryan. You give a little.

DAWE: We’re paying an enormous sum and supplying labour to build the boats the seller hasn’t finished.

CLARKE: When you put it like that it sounds transactional. This is a friendship. You don’t keep score.

DAWE: Minister, are we any safer?

CLARKE: They’re perfectly safe, Bryan.

DAWE: Safe from what?

CLARKE: From the threat.

DAWE: Which threat?

CLARKE: The one we don’t name. You don’t name it. That’s the whole point of it.

DAWE: But you’ve costed it. You’ve sent two hundred tradesmen to Hawaii over it.

CLARKE: We’ve had to be prudent.

DAWE: About a country you won’t name.

CLARKE: Our largest trading partner, Bryan. You don’t insult a customer.

DAWE: So we’re defending ourselves against the people we sell the iron ore to.

CLARKE: We sell them the iron ore. They sell us the anxiety. It’s a very balanced relationship.

DAWE: And the submarines arrive when?

CLARKE: The first in 2032. The Australian-built ones in the 2040s.

DAWE: Until then?

CLARKE: You’ll always know where they are.

DAWE: Thank you for your time.

A note to readers: this, invented interview is a tribute to the comic genius of John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, their remarkable craft and timing and an act of homage to a tradition of satire that is razor-sharp and yet utterly minimalist. Pared to the essentials. Two chairs, a desk, rather than any set and the truth said plainly enough to be unbearable. There is no greater compliment.

A very close cousin to this text also currently appears in The AIMN under, “Underwater Matters: AUKUS and the Art of the Used Submarine.”

Split image evoking 1953 Tehran and 2026 missile strikes over Iran, with declassified document text bleeding across both halves.

The Monster They Made (Part 1)

· 2 Comments ·

The coup did not sow the seeds for the Islamic Revolution. It constructed the machinery. SAVAK liquidated every secular democrat who might have led a modern Iran. The mosque was left standing because it was the one institution the secret police found too difficult to penetrate. Every morning the Australian media tells us the bombing is regrettable but the regime is monstrous. It does not explain who built the regime.

Shuttered shopfronts in a Middle Eastern bazaar at dusk with scattered leaflets on wet cobblestones and distant fire glow through tear gas haze.

The Arson Investigator: How Western sanctions built Iran’s bonfire; and now, the firebugs demand to lead the rescue

· 3 Comments ·

Every empire tells itself its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. Edward Said wrote that about Iraq. It reads as though written yesterday, about Iran. New two-part series from Urban Wronski examining how Western sanctions engineered Iran’s economic collapse — and why the same powers now present themselves as liberators. Part 1: The Arson Investigator.

The US’s Multi‑Front War: A House of Cards

· 7 Comments ·

President Trump’s “Caracas raid,” enabled by the mysterious “Discombobulator,” epitomized a “Butch Cassidy” approach to international relations: a quick smash-and-grab to seize vital resources. Yet, as the rusty reality of Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure and a $200 billion repair bill quickly proved, the high-tech crowbar of the Discombobulator couldn’t fix what decades of neglect and sanctions had broken. Now, as a similar high-stakes gambit unfolds in the Persian Gulf against Iran, leaders like Brazil’s Lula caution against the “terrorism on an industrial scale” that comes with mistaking a tactical victory for a sustainable policy.

AUKUS Caucus

· 5 Comments ·

Australia has built a $368 billion cargo cult and called it strategy. The AUKUS Caucus offers money, bases and sovereignty in exchange for submarines that do not exist, built by shipyards that cannot deliver, on timelines that belong to fantasy. The only thing arriving on schedule is the bill.